Part update, and part invitation for comment. Been working my fingers to the bone (almost literally )setting up a bunch of Japanese Matsumura white steel bench chisels. Dead pleased (but not experienced with waterstones) with the modified Veritas Mk 2 guide (previous post) and Shapton 1,000, 2,000, 5,000 and 12,000 combo. The 2,000 is probably not strictly necessary, but i'm using it since I have it and it lightens the load for the 5000 which doesn't seem to cut all that aggressively.
Getting the surfaces established has proven to be the toughest part of the job - all of the chisels so far have been high on the back a little behind the edge. I did a couple using a 120 Shapton which was slow, the surfaces rough (needing a lot of work on the 1000 to get rid of the scratches), and it didn't give the same feedback as the other stones. Switching to the WorkSharp 3000 (working from the top with the Mk2 honing guide and the accessory platform - the latter levelled accurately to the disc surface so that the bevel angle won't change upon moving to the waterstones) for backs and bevels has worked well. (but a wrong touch when doing the backs could do a lot of harm)
120 and 400grit discs deliver a nice surface that the waterstones can bring up to a polish with two passes a la Charlesworth on each. It's been important to form an accurate/dead flat bevel, as even tiny irregularities take a lot of cutting out on the waterstones. The cylindrical roller on the Mk 2 makes achieving this easy.
Care is needed on the Worksharp - even at its low speed it'd be easy to very quickly overheat the extremity of the edge. I guess the real deal would be a water cooled WorkSharp - but even cutting in bursts of only a couple of seconds and cooling in between it's quite fast. I was surprised to find it was doing the backs flat enough to finish them on the waterstones.
A longer lasting disc would be nice. Has anybody got more experience with diamond lapidary discs since the posts a couple of years ago? Thinking of the cheap Chinese ones on E Bay - do they work well, and is the grading and quality consistent?
ian